Big names and amazing lives at the Spa Centre in Leamington

The ‘first Brexit’, the power of female energy and the tale of one of our most unlikely sporting heroes are the topics of talks by big-name speakers in Leamington in the coming weeks.

Historian David Starkey, influential feminist Germaine Greer and Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards are all coming to the Spa Centre to share their expertise and experience.

Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards will talk about his remarkable life

David Starkey will be talking about Henry VIII , a king whose decisions still reverberate today. Starkey will argue that the the Reformation is the first Brexit – Henry VIII’s his ministers devised the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty and his tumultuous personal life pitted religion against politics as brutally as in our own age.

In this lecture on Wednesday May 31, David Starkey draws on his unique knowledge of Henry’s reign on the one hand, and his insights as a leading commentator on modern politics on the other, to illuminate both the Tudor age and our own.

Australian-born writer Germaine Greer is regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century and will be giving a talk on Thursday June 1.

She will cite the example of the women who protested at the RAF base at Greenham Common in 1981, who shepherd stranded cetaceans back into deeper water, who stand in front of lorries carrying live animals to slaughter and who lash themselves to conveyor belts in protest against the logging of old-growth forests as evidence of the female power that needs to be unleashed to protect life on earth.

Germaine Greer will talk about the importance of feminine power to change the world

Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards is a unique British sporting hero with an extraordinary story to tell. He became Great Britain’s self-taught first Olympic ski-jumper, and missed out on medals by some distance, but won the hearts of the nation with his plucky attitude and down-to-earth persona, returning to Britain as a sporting celebrity. In Try Hard on Tuesday June 6, Eddie talks through his life journey, from learning ski-jumping and being shunned by the sporting establishment, to the extensive surgery to rebuild his face and body following years of spectacular crashes on the snow, from bankruptcy to gaining a Law degree, and even how he became a most unlikely pop-star in Finland.